salmonrojo

Red Salmon Arts

presents

a discussion & book signing

with 

author of Becoming Indian:

 

In Becoming Indian, Circe Sturm examines Cherokee identity politics and the phenomenon of racial shifting. Racial shifters, as described by Sturm, are people who have changed their racial self-identification from non-Indian to Indian on the US Census. Many racial shifters are people who, while looking for their roots, have recently discovered their Native American ancestry. Others have family stories of an Indian great-great-grandmother or -grandfather they have not been able to document. Still others have long known they were of Native American descent, including their tribal affiliation, but only recently have become interested in reclaiming this aspect of their family history. Despite their differences, racial shifters share a conviction that they have Indian blood when asserting claims of indigeneity. Becoming Indian explores the social and cultural values that lie behind this phenomenon and delves into the motivations of these Americans—from so many different walks of life—to reinscribe their autobiographies and find deep personal and collective meaning in reclaiming their Indianness. 

 

Circe Sturm teaches at UT Austin, where she is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and co-Director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies program. She has spent most of her career working with American Indian people in the US. Her first book, Blood Politics: Race, Culture and Identity in the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (California, 2002), explores issues of race, culture, nation and citizenship in Cherokee Country, particularly as they are expressed through the idiom of “blood.” Recently, Sturm has turned her attention to related debates about indigenous reclamation, tribal recognition and sovereignty.